Welcome back. When we looked at this 18th century painting, I directed your attention to the women seated at the side. They're playing a double headed drum and singing the wedding songs just like the women in the last video we heard were singing during the village wedding in Banpurawa. The women singers in Banpurawa often explain that songs just like theirs, songs just like the song that you heard, were performed at Ram and Sita's wedding as well. They see themselves with performing the same role that the women in Ayodhya performed at Ram's wedding. This is true. Even when today's women's songs directly question the Ramayana narrative or challenge the connection between today's village and Ram's birthplace at Ayodhya, as was the case with the previous song. Our village wedding cannot be like Ram's. This is one message of that song. The women called Ram's father Dashrath crazy for even attempting to fashion Banpurawa village weddings after Ram's wedding in Ayodhya. The women are not the only musicians present in this 18th century painting. In the lower part of the painting, you'll see a pair of drummers along with a Shehnai player. And, as well as several descriptions of women's songs in Tulsidas' 16th century version of the Ramayana. The Ramcharitmanas also makes mentions of drummers at Ram's wedding. One couplet describes the skill of the drummers, and the skill of the horseback princes who have their horses march in time. Handsome princes heard the drums sounding, and had their horses struck to the beat, and even the skilled dancers of Ayodhya were amazed at how they did not miss a single step. Just as Banpurawa village weddings include women singing at the wedding tent, drummers too, are often present. These are images of a drumming troupe led by Surinder Kumar, of [NAME], a village not too far from Banpurawa. Surinder is a performer in the middle playing the large round drum called Dhapla. In the photo on the left his colleagues play the nagara drums, which greatly resemble the instruments in the 18th century image we just saw. Also included in Surinder's performance troupe is a joker, a clown, and a cross dressing dancer. A young man who dresses in women's clothes for this type of performance. This is a very common performance configuration in North Indian village dramatic tradition. You have a lead drummer. And a joker and a cross dressing dancer. The joker or clown this type of joker, is found in traditions, many traditions across north and south India. And as in many global clowning traditions, the joker here is a, very transgressive figure. He's allowed to say things that few others would be allowed to say. This particular group, Surinder's group, is known as a Kurkuriya. A Kurkuriya group, so named because of the kurkur sound of the smallest drum. There are many Ramayana connections here, Ramayana connections between this Kurkuriya group and the ancient story of the Ramayana tradition. Just how the women explained to me about their own songs, about how they were performing a function that was present in the ancient Ramayana tradition, Surinder and his fellow drummers explained that they beat the drums at village weddings just as musicians beat their drums in Ayodhya during Ram's wedding. Here again, Sudershan Rao the recently appointed chair of the Indian Council of Historical Research, might see this, again, as modern evidence of the historical truth of the Ramayana. But let's keep digging. What are these men performing? What are they saying? These performers are not from Banpurawa village, where the wedding was taking place. They are from a chammar community in a neighbouring village. They were hired by Suresh's family to perform for his wedding. Chammar is a name of a caste. They are leather workers. Because of their work with animal skins such as the skins used in their drums, chammars have been considered to be lower. Quite low on various conceptions of caste hierarchy. They were performing at the wedding of a family in the Kurmi caste. Not considered particularly high caste but nevertheless the dominant caste in this area of Eastern Uttar Pradesh in this village near Varanasi. These social realities shape their performances, and also shape their experience of the Ramayana tradition. The visual resemblance to the drummers that performed during Ram's wedding in Ayodhya is one potential connection the Kurkuriya drummers have with Ramayana tradition. But in addition to that, the joker and the cross dressing dancer may take on the roles of Ram and of Sita of the hero and the heroine of the Ramayana. During short little, short little dramatic outbursts during their performances. They sometimes pantomime little scenes from the Ramayana narrative and they certainly pantomime Ram and Sita's wedding ceremony when they performed during one of the night's of Suresh's wedding. The joker could also take on the role of Dashrath, Ram's father. Dashrath who is being criticised in the women's song you just heard. So in these little pantomimes Dashrath may delight at his son's wedding, or he might be extremely distraught when later his son Ram is banished to the forest for 14 years and these moments are extremely comical for everyone present. They draw huge laughs from the crowd. Despite coincidence, the joker here, his name is Tulsi, Tulsi Bansoo. Tulsi, so he shares a name with Tulsidas, the author of the 16th century Hindi Ramayana, the Ramcharitmanas, and this is a fact he was very keen to share with me. So as did the women, who perform the Ramayana song, how can we afford a wedding like Ram's? The Kurkuriya drummers here also use their performance to critique and to question. Although low caste, they are given free rein to make these criticisms. They're allowed to make these criticisms because of rules governing performance, because of rules governing clowning, and because they are fulfilling a ritually important function, one that is found in the Ramayana itself, in the ancient Ramayana text. Banpurawa village is located on the bank of the Ganges. The Ganges river, down stream from the city of Varanasi. The name of the river, Ganga Mai, Ganges mother is synonymous with the goddess. The river is considered a goddess in Hindu tradition. So the sacred river flows through, through Varanasi ghats, the famous steps leading down to the river. In a few miles, it reaches a village, as you can see here. The first thing the Kurkuriya performers did during their evening performance at Suresh's wedding was to mock that river. Surendra, the leader of the group, said look [FOREIGN] that's Ganga Mai. It's the Ganges' mother. And Tulsinbansu, the joker, accidentally mishears him and says Nanga Mai. Nanga, nanga means naked. It rhymes with Ganga. Then he goes Ganga Mai, Nanga Mai, Ganga Mai. This is quite funny, people find this extremely funny in the audience. But it's also a direct sort of verbal assault, albeit a comic one on the sacred goddess river. But he's allowed to do it because he is a joker. This isn't something anyone in the community could just come out and say. But the joker can use the opportunity to mock the sacred river worshiped by his higher caste patrons and they laughed, they laughed a lot, and this is a very common technique with clowns in Indian performance traditions. In the video, you'll first hear, you'll hear the drummers just play one of the basic rhythms. Then you'll hear Tulsi state an obvious truth. He shouts them out in short, little songs. He sings that the elderly cannot become young by putting on make-up or shaving their facial hair. And while he does this, he points out to various old people in the audience, making fun of them. But then he goes on to state another truth which is a veiled critique of caste hierarchy. The wheat, he says, the wheat is polluted, it's jhuta. Jhuta refers to a type of pollution, it's a type of ritual pollution, often polluted by saliva. If something is, is touched by someone's saliva, it becomes jhuta, becomes ritually polluted. So his question is, how can we offer bread made from the wheat to the god or goddess? Because it's polluted. In the song, he says it's polluted by a parrot, the parrot that's come down to the field and given it a peck. But in the context of caste, it must be remembered that these issues of ritual pollution are central issues to these Kurkriya performers who come from a low caste, leather working community that has been historically, that is historically been considered unclean because of their traditional profession. But the Banpurawa village family, they need the Kurkuriya drummers. Without them their wedding would be missing that crucial element that was also present at Ram's wedding in Ayodhya. They also need them because when the groom's wedding party arrives at the bride's house in the neighboring village district. They travel there for the final wedding ceremonies, and they will bring the bride back to their home. So when they arrive at the bride's house, they'll be greeted by another band, hired by the bride's family. And in the video you'll hear a sample of their competition. The two bands greet each other with a competition. They try and out play each other. Each group has a dancer, each group plays to a different beat. You win when the opposing dancer can not hear the beat of his own group. And in this instance the Kurkuriya group won even though their opponents had microphones and speakers. They were very proud of this fact that they were able to overpower them just with their live sound. So this drumming group, living representatives of the performers at Ram's and Sita's wedding in Ayodhya. But also modern day comic inversions of Ram and Sita themselves in the form of a joker and a dancer. So these performers brought honour to their patrons, they explained to me, when they musically bested their rivals.
